


Ac Yno yn y Dyffryn Tawel, Mi Glywaf Gân yn Swn yr Awel

by katonahottinroof



Category: Pride (2014)
Genre: Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Issues, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Personal Growth, Yuletide 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:20:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28117581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katonahottinroof/pseuds/katonahottinroof
Summary: "To be born in Wales,Not with a silver spoon in your mouth,But, with music in your bloodAnd with poetry in your soul,Is a privilege indeed."- 'In Passing' by Brian Harris
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Ac Yno yn y Dyffryn Tawel, Mi Glywaf Gân yn Swn yr Awel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gwenynnefydd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwenynnefydd/gifts).



> Title translates to; "And there in the quiet valley, I hear a song in the sound of the breeze." - 'Ysbryd y Nos' by Edward H Dafis
> 
> Happy Yuletide, Gwenynnefydd! I hope you'll enjoy this, and that the coming year treats you as amazingly as you definitely deserve. Your prompt was fantastic and I can't believe I was lucky enough to be able to write for this fandom this Yuletide.
> 
> I've tried my best with the Welsh... but it's been over ten years since I was in Wales for any length of time, and my memories of Welsh Lit lectures are a distant memory! Please feel free to lend an expert eye and let me know if I've slipped up anywhere. It was lovely to have a chance to look back on it, though, so thank you so, so much for that!

Cliff’s never been what you might call ‘good with words’. 

Oh, he’s got them choking up his brain – lines of poetry and prose coming out of his ears it feels like, some days. They rise up inside him like a great wave, ready to crest over and spill out, but something keeps his mouth shut tight, the words all buttoned up behind his teeth and his stuttering tongue. 

It was different when Alan was alive. Alan always knew what Cliff was thinking. Thick as thieves, their mam called them, for all that Cliff had been nearly ten when Alan came along – mam’s ‘little Christmas surprise’ she used to coo over him, stroking her hand over his hair fondly. Mam had nearly been too old for another one and da had been dead before Cliff hit sixteen (a mining accident; one of many over the long, long years) but mam had always had a sweet smile and a hug for her boys. 

Cliff had been planning on going to college in Cardiff – his mam had been so proud, and even da had been happy, in that cautious, soft way of his. Cliff got his love of reading from his da, mam said, from the long summer memories of Sunday afternoon picnics up in the hills above Onllwyn, mam stretched out on the tartan blanket with her head in da’s lap, Alan trying to do cartwheels in the windswept grass, and Cliff had drifted off most of those hazy afternoons with his da’s voice wrapping him in soft poetry, of Geraint Goodwin and Vernon Watkins. 

Maureen had never quite known what to make of him, Cliff knows. Alan’s older brother, quiet and disinclined to marry – maybe she thinks he’d missed his chance, perhaps, looking after their mam as her cough worsened and Cliff had turned to the mines instead of college to be able to put food on the table and keep his brother in school uniform that Alan had seemed to grow out of every time Cliff turned around. But he’s been there for her and the boys as much as he could, loved his nephews like his own sons – or like he thinks he might have done, if he’d had children of his own. 

Cliff still lives in the little terraced house he’d grown up in. The twin beds he and his brother had have been swapped out for a small double, and his parents’ room is now a guest room (no one stays over, of course – everyone he knows lives in Onllwyn or the villages around, close enough to safely get home of an evening, even after a few drinks down the welfare) but it might be more appropriate to call it a library, as silly as it sounds. 

Cliff has a love of books; old, new – paper or hardback. He’s never been able to walk past the book stall in the charity jumble sales without at least another couple. History, biographies of great men and women, fiction and non-. The travel guides are possibly his second favourite after the reams of poetry. He likes looking at far off places around the world. He might never get to see in person, but reading about them is almost as good. 

_Yn unig, ond nid yn unig_ [1]. Cliff has his books and he has Maureen and the boys, Dai Donovan and Hefina Heddon and the others with the union. On Sunday afternoons in summer, he walks up into the hills by himself until he’s surrounded by nothing but the big sky and the rolling hills he calls home, where it doesn’t matter if he stutters or if he trips over his words. There’s no-one to hear him up there but the disinterested sheep and the windswept grass.

Cliff’s content – and if he’s not completely happy, then he’s happy to be content, and that’s good enough.

***

Until it isn’t enough any longer.

LGSM are a breath of fresh air – they’re all so young. Even Jonathan, the closest in age to Cliff, just seems youthful. It makes Cliff feels every one of his long years, like an oak, standing solid against the changes in the world outside of Onllwyn. 

He’s never been to London. 

These young people actually listen to Cliff when he talks – in a way his brother’s boys haven’t since they realised that there was more fun to be had running through the lanes with their friends then listening to old Uncle Cliff’s stories. It’s easy, all of a sudden – with a couple of beers in him, mind! – easy to let the words of _Sabrina fair_ roll out, not stuck to the roof of his mouth like cheap white bread, but falling like water over stones in a stream. 

They’re Cliff’s new link with a world outside of Onllwyn and his books and so Cliff lies in bed that night, listens to the sounds of a couple of the young men moving around in his guest room as they get ready to turn in, and thinks that if he loses this now, now he’s had a real taste of what the world can offer besides words on a page – then he thinks his heart might truly break.

***

He thinks Hefina knows. Hefina always knows.

Cliff sometimes thinks Hefina knows that one thing that he keeps shut up in his mind tighter than anything else. Sometimes she’ll give him a certain look (and Hefina has an entire dictionary of looks, ranging from fond exasperation – with Cliff, with Dai, and anyone and everyone under the age of twenty – to brimstone and fire fury) and before those bright young ladies and lads came, Cliff would have shivered at that look. He thinks his mam knew, maybe. Alan as well – he’d never pushed Cliff to find a girl, at least. 

Mam and Alan are both gone, now, and if Hefina knows… well, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

***

He stands in front of the committee seated around the tables in the welfare and freezes.

The words won’t come, and his mouth’s dry with it. Dimly he hears young Martin standing up, trying to yell the men down. His hands are curled into fists, shaking, and when he looks up from the table’s surface, all he can see is the triumphant look on Maureen’s face. Next to her, Lee’s looking grimly satisfied, but Johnny.

_Oh, Johnny. You poor lad._

His youngest nephew’s eyes are wide, gaze flicking from person to person as the argument intensifies. It’s Martin against the room, now, and Cliff’s never felt so useless, so stupid, in all his long life. 

It’s a foregone conclusion, the vote. Has been since Cliff saw Maureen change the timing on the notice. She’s always been strong, Maureen, always dug her heels in and kept her head high, kept food on the table for her boys and her front step spotlessly clean – even when she lost Alan, she’d kept her pride. Admirable, for a miner’s wife.

Not so much right now, when the people around him – some that Cliff’s known since they were little kids in the schoolyard together – are spitting on the generosity, the _kindness_ of people who don’t owe them a thing. People who came to their little town and endured scorn and disgust and forged a little place for themselves out of the pure goodness of their hearts. People that, at the very moment the hammer comes down, are on their way back from raising even more money to help them keep the fight going. A fight that has nothing to do with them. 

Cliff feels like he’s going to throw up. It’s only Martin’s steady hand on his shoulder that keeps him upright. 

Then Hefina and Dai arrive, the van pulling up as the committee and its assorted hangers on leave the hall – too late, much too late, although Hefina looks like an tiny avenging angel with a certain something sparking like fire in her eyes as they all follow her back in. 

It’s much too late for any last vestiges of a friendship with his sister-in-law as well. There’s nothing left in Maureen’s eyes when she looks at them all (at him) but hate. 

Hefina’s hovering at his elbow when he turns away, glaring after Maureen. 

“You’ll be coming home with me, now, Cliff. Get you a cup of tea and a sit down and we’ll talk it over.” She glances over the huddle of LGSM by the van, looking like a flock of lost ducklings. “Don’t suppose they’ll want to stay long, given everything, but I’ll not be turning them away just yet. Dai,” she calls over, “ _dewch â'r plant o gwmpas i fy un i_ [2], would you, there’s a love.” 

Dai looks as annoyed as the rest of them, nods shortly at her, and Hefina latches on to Cliff’s arm, dragging him down the street to hers. Strange, Cliff thinks, stumbling after her, his legs seem to have stopped working properly. 

Hefina’s house is warm inside, Glen’s sitting in his usual armchair in the sitting room, pipe to hand although he’s already folding his newspaper as Hefina storms in. 

“Get the kettle on, _annwyl_ [3],” and Glen, bless him, is already moving towards the kitchen. Cliff’s coat’s removed in short order and he’s pushed down on the sofa before he can even think of protesting. “I could kill that bloody woman,” Hefina mutters, stomping out to hang up their coats in the hall. Cliff hears a ‘ahh’ of realisation from the kitchen – Glen’s always been quick on the uptake. 

All Cliff can think about is the bitter triumph in Maureen’s eyes.

***

It’s strange how Onllwyn seems greyer than it ever has every time the London lot leave, only Cliff knows that this time they won’t be coming back.

***

He walks up in the Beacons one Sunday with a slim copy of _Gwalia Deserta_ tucked deep in his pocket and nothing around him but the heather and the open sky. Time was, Sundays meant lunch around the table with his brother and sister-in-law after chapel in the morning, the boys playing on the rug in the front room and Maureen laughing at one of Alan’s ridiculous jokes.

Time was, Cliff felt like he still had a family. 

He perches on a bench along one of the well-trodden paths, flicks through the pages until he comes to XV, the words as familiar to him as his own breathing. It’s always resonated with him, the old poem. Written about and for men like him – beaten down by the mines that still hold their lives. _I'r de, mae pethau'n sullen ._ [4]

Sullen indeed. Cliff can feel it seething under the surface, the violence brewing. If they’re lucky, no one will get caught under a policeman’s baton. Onllwyn’s been lucky, in that respect – they’ve locked the boys up, to be sure, and there’s been bruises and scrapes in the occasional clashes. The police bussed in around Onllwyn seem to go in more for jeering and taunting than outright violence. Cliff doesn’t know whether it’s because they’re lazy or just don’t fancy running the risk of getting themselves hurt – knows that it’s not down to any sympathy on their part, not when the police bring in a food van to hand out hot breakfasts that the police parade past the miners only to scrape every last bit into the bin. 

_Ffiaidd_ [5]! Disgusting, is what it is. Throwing good food away when the men have hungry kiddies at home and the Women’s Support group, Hefina and the others, are parcelling out ever-decreasing amounts of tins and packets of dry goods. 

He’s Welsh to the core, is Cliff; Onllwyn born and raised – breathes coal dust in his sleep and has walked these hills every week of his life, feels like, but God he hates it. Hates the fact that he’s seeing his entire community being beaten down in this drawn-out, nonsensical battle. Hates that they’re bending – slowly but surely, they’re all going to buckle under Thatcher’s decisions. He knows what’ll happen – they’ll go back to work – will have to, just to keep food in the house and body and soul together – and then the mines will eventually close anyway, one by one. 

And how will they survive then, their little community? What sort of life will be left for Lee, who dropped out of school at sixteen to help his mam, and Johnny who barely scraped it through to his A-levels. For Siȃn’s little ones, and for Dai and Martin and the rest. He’s under no apprehensions that he’ll not soon find more work, not at his age. If he’s lucky, the mines will struggle on long enough to keep Cliff in work until he’s able to start claiming his pension, and he’s got some savings put by, but what then? A slow, grey slide to the grave.

Sometimes Cliff wonders if perhaps he shouldn’t have been encouraged to read all the poets he could get his hands on when he was younger. Too much melancholy, Hefina’d say, too much of the doldrums.

***

" _Mae mam wedi llyncu mul_ [6],” Johnny says, and Cliff swats at him in passing as he moves to put the kettle on.

“Pay your mam some respect, _mwrddrwg_ [7],” Cliff tuts. It’s the first time he’s seen Johnny in weeks, more than just in passing, in the crowds seething and snapping at the smug policemen outside the gates to the mine.

“Don’t see why,” he hears Johnny mutter.

Cliff leans heavily on the counter, staring at the kettle, at his hands wrapped around the edge of the formica. “Because she’s your mam,” he says quietly, and Johnny goes silent behind him, “because she’s family, and you’re not ready to lose your family yet, lad.”

Johnny’s face is a picture of misery when Cliff turns around and he won’t meet Cliff’s eyes.

“Ah, Johnny,” Cliff trails off, lost for words. He’d had Alan, despite the age-gap, but who does Johnny have? Lee?

Maybe. Maybe Johnny’s pull on his big brother’s loyalty will be stronger than Maureen’s pull on her eldest son. Maybe Alan’s blood will prove true in the end – both of them stubborn to a fault, but he’d never thought Maureen could be so cruel and willfully blind.

“It’s not fair,” Johnny says, voice barely more than a whisper.

And Cliff can find no words with which to comfort him.

***

He sits on his bench, looking out over the valleys. Somewhere down in Onllwyn behind him, Johnny’s sitting down to Sunday lunch with Maureen and his brother. Cliff’s had a standing invitation to Hefina and Glen’s for the last couple of months, but he just couldn’t face it today.

The clouds are darker on the horizon. Cliff lifts his face into the wind and tries to decide if the weather’s going to take a turn for the worse, or if the worst’s already passed them by.

There’s a metaphor in that. Perhaps a tad heavy-handed, but Cliff’s never claimed to be a great thinker.

His heart feels heavy. Cliff closes his eyes and lets the bitter January wind dry any tears that might make an appearance before they even get a chance to fall.

***

Dai’s speaking to him, but Cliff’s finding it hard to make out the words because there’s a ringing in his ears. It’s been a constant companion to him over the last couple of weeks and Cliff’s just finding it hard to tune in, so to speak, past the static it’s causing like an old wireless radio.

Dai’s ever-patient, bless him. Doesn’t mind repeating himself for daft old Cliff.

In the end, Cliff has to excuse himself from the meeting. He claims he has a headache, mostly because he doesn’t know how to tell Dai that his entire body’s feels like it’s aching and yet not at the same time.

The houses are grey, the street’s grey. Everything in Onllwyn is grey.

Cliff can’t remember when it last felt like there was any colour in their tiny town. He knows when it was, of course – that last day before that stupid, Christ-forsaken meeting, when he’d waved Hefina and Siȃn and the others off, grinning as the car peeled off down the road – but he just can’t picture it.

He sits in his front room, in his da’s old armchair that’s been reupholstered at least twice in its long life and stares at the picture on the wall – himself, Alan and their parents. Alan looks happy – grinning at the camera with his chubby little boy cheeks on full display – while mam looks sweetly content, her face turned a bit towards da like a flower after the sun.

Cliff thinks he must be all of fourteen in that photo. It’s now yellowed around the edges but he remembers mam dusting it religiously every Saturday. He looks happy as well.

He’s not sure how long he sits there but thinks the clock must have chimed the hour twice when there’s a hammering at the front door. Cliff blinks as if awakening from a daze, thinks about it, and then levers himself out of his chair.

Hefina’s outside on the step, glaring off down the length of the street; Cliff’s not sure at what, or whom, but could probably hazard a guess if pressed. She turns on him, all five foot nothing staring up at him with narrowed eyes.

“Come on,” she snaps, like Cliff’s inconveniencing her by not moving quickly enough, “need some help down at the hall.”

Cliff blinks, slowly, then turns to grab his jacket from the hook. Hey feels like he’s wading through tar.

Hefina storms off ahead like a tugboat pulling a much taller ship into port, Cliff bobbing in her wake with his hands shoved deep into his pockets. Siân’s in the hall itself as they pass the open inner door, paperwork strewn on the table in front of her, her kids lying on the floor and colouring on scrap paper. He manages a nod as she looks up, but Hefina’s already disappearing into the little kitchenette, door swinging shut behind her.

She sets him up at the table and starts spreading margarine on bread next to him, passing him the buttered slices as she finishes so he can cut them up in neat little sections.

He starts off with triangles, then starts overthinking it. Maybe some people might prefer quarters? Maybe Hefina meant for him to cut them in quarters all along?

“I should have said more,” Cliff mutters, staring down at the bread. Next to him, Hefina’s busy as she ploughs through slice after slice. It feels like a confession. “I could have – I could have spoken better.” He flushes as he feels that blush of shame again, just like in the meeting.

“If you’re going to cut, cut it straight,” Hefina tuts. “Triangles.”

Quarters, apparently, were the wrong decision. He moves his last, admittedly battered, attempt to the tray and repositions the next two pieces in front of him, squares them up.

He doesn’t look up when he speaks. Cliff stares at his hands moving as he cuts the bread and doesn’t dare glance at Hefina.

“I’m gay.”

The words ring out in the small kitchen. For a second, Cliff thinks he’s shouted it, that Siȃn’s going to hear from the other room. It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. A shiver runs down his spine. He trusts Hefina, of course, knows she’d taken the Londoners to heart and treated them all like she’d seen them grow from nappies to adulthood.

But what if? What if it’s easier for Hefina to accept some random Londoners who were always, in the end, ephemeral to their little village? She’s known Cliff since they were born, practically, and maybe this is just a step too far?

Beside him, Hefina stops moving. Cliff’s eyes start watering. How childish, he thinks, but still. What if?

Out of the corner of his eye, he can tell she’s turned to look at him.

“I know,” Hefina says, her voice unusually soft. Hefina always sounds like she’s in charge – had done on the playground, does now in the committee meetings.

Cliff stares at her.

“I’ve known for a little while now, Cliff.”

He blinks. Hefina doesn’t look angry. Or upset – God knows the whole of Onllwyn knows when Hefina’s got a bee in her bonnet about something!

“Since the gays arrived,” Cliff nods. Well, he supposes that makes sense. That Jonathan had been a bit of a dish – maybe… but he’d tried to be so careful, so used to sneaking quick glances out of the corner of his eye, never letting his gaze linger. Hefina’s known him better than anyone since Alan died, though.

“Well, I can’t speak for the rest of the village, but speaking for myself, since about 1968.”

That’s a lot, to be honest. He huffs a bit of a laugh. Can’t a man have any secrets around his best and oldest friend? The cheek, honestly!

“Well... yeah.”

She smiles at him – Hefina’s real smile, the one where the corners of her eyes are all crinkled up. Cliff has a sudden thought that maybe if he was a different sort then he would have found himself falling helplessly in love with her.

Cliff goes back to the bread, mouth curving up in what feels like his first smile in months. Hefina huffs a laugh next to him, nudging at his side with her elbow – he sways with the motion before nudging her back. It feels like they’re both ten again, tucked into one of the desks in the schoolhouse and not paying attention to their lessons.

Hefina’s his oldest, dearest friend and Cliff’s finally realised that she always will be, no matter what.

***

In March, they go back to work.

What other option do they have? The money’s running out for all mining communities across the country and people are finding it harder and harder to keep body and soul together. The orders have come down from above and they’ll fall in line with the union because that’s what true union men do.

If they have to go back, though, then they’ll go with dignity, marching under their banner and to the sound of the local brass band. Cliff’s never been musical, but the trumpet and drum have been sounds that have followed him from childhood, the beat stirring something old and fierce tucked deep inside him. _‘Our sadness being wrapped in harps and music’_ [8] indeed.

And what do they have left, after so long fighting, but their pride and dignity?

It’s a surprise, to see young Joe standing there at the side of the road. He knows from Hefina (who heard it from Gwen who heard it from Siȃn who heard it from Steph up in London) that Joe’s been absent recently – they’re not sure why, but they’d not even been able to find him. Cliff’s proud – he’s so proud of that boy, that young man. Not sure what’s happened, of course, but who doesn’t have a difficult family to deal with? (Cliff’s starting to see the humour in it, now Hefina’s actually forcing him to interact with others in their village more again)

Cliff marches off to the mine with his head held a little higher. The sun’s risen on another day, and Cliff’s got a job to do.

***

When Hefina floats the idea, Cliff wants, so desperately, to agree. A trip to London, of all places! _Chwerthinllyd_ [9]! Cliff doesn’t belong in London – he’s not that type of person. Cliff belongs in Onllwyn, that much was made clear when da died and Cardiff became a vanishing dream.

He can’t possibly.

Johnny sits in the second armchair in Cliff’s sitting room the Sunday before, fidgeting and refusing to meet Cliff’s eyes. He says he’s going, that he’s getting on the buses with the others and he’d had a row with Lee about it.

He doesn’t mention his mam, not once in all the time he’s sitting there.

He asks his uncle to come with him.

“Ah, Johnny,” Cliff sighs. “I’m too old to be off gallivanting around the country now.”

“I-” Johnny starts. Stops. Takes another sip of his tea. “I think I need to.” It’s only then that he looks up at Cliff, eyes red like he’s either been crying recently, or like he’s about to start.

Cliff looks out the window, at the sun shining on another day in Onllwyn, to be sure, but it’s another day everywhere else as well and Cliff’s not been able to refuse either of his nephews anything since they were stumbling around on tottering chubby legs and no taller than his knee.

The next Saturday, early, he finds himself waiting by the mini bus with Hefina and the others. Johnny’s been pulled to join Carl on one of the big coaches, looking a bit wild-eyed. He’ll be fine, Cliff reasons. No need to nanny the boy, but he’ll be there in London as well, keeping an eye out – it’s Johnny’s first time out of Onllwyn as well, really, beyond a trip to the local cinema every now and then.

Hefina nudges him towards the door of the mini bus and Cliff clambers in, ducking his head and squeezing into the first row with Gwen.

It’s a new adventure and Cliff can’t _wait_ to see what’ll happen next.

**Author's Note:**

> 1Alone, but not lonely [return]
> 
> 2Bring the kids around to mine [return]
> 
> 3Dear [return]
> 
> 4‘To the South, things are sullen’ from _Gwalia Deserta XV_ by Idris Davies [return]
> 
> 5Disgusting! [return]
> 
> 6Mum’s sulking, lit. ‘mum’s swallowed a mule’ [return]
> 
> 7'Cheeky monkey' (sort of. Essentially, at any rate!) [return]
> 
> 8From _’In Passing’_ , Brian Harris [return]
> 
> 9Ridiculous! [return]


End file.
